In the main tunnel of Track Zero.
"...Two and Three, signal lost."
The "Cleaner" captain quietly listened to the final transmission from the communication channel, a garbled mess of monster shrieks and energy blasts. His face, hidden behind his tactical mask, showed no emotion.
He watched on his wrist terminal as the life signs of his two teammates turned from green to red, and finally, went dark.
"Captain, we..." the surviving team member, Four, said with a hint of hesitation in his voice.
"A trap."
The captain cut him off, his tone as cold as the rock beneath their feet.
"This was no accident. The target... is using the native creatures of this land to eliminate us."
"He can accurately predict our flanking routes and trigger a seemingly accidental disturbance at the right moment."
In his mind, he quickly reassessed the target's profile.
The danger level was upgraded from "extremely dangerous ghost" to "unknown predator with high tactical intelligence."
"Change of orders," the captain said decisively. "All personnel, retreat to the surface immediately. All underground pursuit operations are suspended until we have a plan to counter these 'environmental traps.'"
"Also, send the latest capability assessment report on the target to Mr. Buck."
"Tell him that his hundred-thousand-credit-point bounty..."
"Might not be enough."
...
At the other end of the tunnel, Ling Feng didn't know that the enemy had temporarily retreated.
He was just following his instincts, pulling Shi Lei deeper and deeper into the hot and slippery passage.
The environment around them grew increasingly harsh.
The smell of sulfur in the air was so thick it was almost suffocating. The temperature was at least sixty degrees Celsius. Shi Lei felt like a steamed bun, every breath a searing pain in his lungs.
Strange, dark red glowing mineral crystals began to appear on the walls. The entire world was bathed in a strange, hellish red light.
"Feng..." Shi Lei's lips were cracked, his voice hoarse. "How... much farther?"
"Almost there."
Ling Feng was in much better shape than Shi Lei.
The "Stellar Transformation" technique was circulating automatically within him, creating a faint energy cycle that helped him resist the external heat and radiation.
He could feel an immense, incredibly violent energy source ahead, throbbing intensely, like a heart.
Finally, after rounding one last corner, their view opened up dramatically.
Shi Lei was so stunned by the sight before him that he was speechless.
They were standing on the edge of an unimaginably huge, circular underground cavern.
In the center of the cavern was a giant, bottomless abyss that led straight to the mantle. Roiling within the abyss was not water, but golden-red, viscous lava!
The scorching lava, like the blood of the planet's core, emitted a heat intense enough to bend light, illuminating the entire cavern like daylight!
A massive, rust-covered, ring-shaped steel platform was suspended above the abyss. Countless thick pipes and cables extended from the platform like hideous blood vessels, plunging deep into the roiling lava.
This was one of the ultimate creations of the "pre-civilization era"—the Geothermal Core Power Station!
A mad miracle, a station that stole energy directly from the planet's core!
"We're..." Shi Lei was so shocked by the destructive, magnificent sight that his scalp tingled. "We're going to stay in a place like this?"
"Only here," Ling Feng's eyes, however, shone with a strange light, "can we completely block their tracking."
He pulled Shi Lei along a narrow maintenance path at the edge of the cavern to a relatively safe, old-era observation room built into the rock wall, made of ultra-high-strength radiation-proof glass.
This was clearly where the engineers of the past had monitored the core's operation. Although long abandoned, the basic sealing facilities were still intact.
After closing the heavy isolation door, the heatwave that had almost cooked them was finally shut out.
Shi Lei collapsed to the floor like a puddle of mud, gasping for air.
Ling Feng walked to the huge observation window and looked down at the roiling sea of lava below, a veritable crucible of hell.
He could feel the "Pneuma" energy particles in the air, so violent they were almost condensing into a physical form.
There was no fear on his face.
Instead, there was... an extreme craving.
For any living being, this was a deadly, poisonous hell.
But for him, a practitioner of "Stellar Transformation," this "Earth's Core Crucible," directly connected to the planet's source energy, was undoubtedly the most perfect, most luxurious... training ground in the world!
Buck and his "Cleaners" thought they had pushed them into a desperate situation.
They never would have imagined that they had personally delivered a fledgling young dragon to the scalding hot dragon's nest most suitable for its growth.
"Shi Lei," Ling Feng turned to his friend, his eyes burning with unprecedented fighting spirit. "We'll rest here for a bit."
"When we go out again..."
"It will be time for those hunters to learn the meaning of 'fear.'"